


poetry

by CiaranthePage



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (briefly) - Freeform, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Pre-Canon, sharing favorite books, this is just them being happy i won't lie to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiaranthePage/pseuds/CiaranthePage
Summary: "Sloane rested her arm on Hurley’s shoulders and laid back on the pillow, holding her book aloft. She could see why this was Hurley’s favorite; it was more of a poetry collection and one of the sappiest love stories she could remember getting her hands on. A scattering of pages were marked with the feathers Sloane signed her letters with during their sort-of-courtship, slid in as bookmarks on poems that reminded Hurley of Sloane or how they’d fallen in love. Sloane had read all of those before, but now that she’d committed herself to reading the whole thing, she read those with a certain measure of extra care.After all, she still hadn’t figured out quite what reminded Hurley of her in a few of them..."(Sloane reads Hurley's favorite book, Hurley joins in, and everyone falls a little more in love)





	poetry

**Author's Note:**

> i made a dumb hc and then it exploded and now i have this massive pile of fluff to share with y'all  
> i hope you like it <3

Sloane rustled Hurley’s hair, suppressing a giggle when she wrinkled her nose in her doze and buried her face in Sloane’s chest. Sloane rested her arm on Hurley’s shoulders and laid back on the pillow, holding her book aloft. She could see why this was Hurley’s favorite; it was more of a poetry collection and one of the sappiest love stories she could remember getting her hands on. A scattering of pages were marked with the feathers Sloane signed her letters with during their sort-of-courtship, slid in as bookmarks on poems that reminded Hurley of Sloane or how they’d fallen in love. Sloane had read all of those before, but now that she’d committed herself to reading the whole thing, she read those with a certain measure of extra care.

 

After all, she still hadn’t figured out  _quite_ what reminded Hurley of her in a few of them, including the one she found herself flipping to after a few minutes of reading.

 

_I_

_My love waits for me_

_Patiently by the open sea._

_I send her letters,_

_She sends her love_

_Wrapped in raven feathers._

_One day I’ll reach her_

_And together we’ll race away_

_Up into the sky_

_Fly away to a place more suited_

_To us_

_And us alone_.

 

Oh. Wait. Duh.

 

She felt her cheeks flush with warmth as a dumb grin spread across her face. Wow. Hurley had loved this book for years, she knew that, but that was a _hell_ of a coincidence, this old poem mentioning raven feathers and racing; not to mention she’d started jokingly calling Hurley’s apartment their “nest” because it was so high up and no one else lived on the same floor. The poem was also short and sweet, just like Hurley.

 

That thought made her laugh, even at the risk of waking Hurley up. _Wow_ , that was a sappy-ass thing to think. Even  _if_ she was reading her fiancee’s favorite book while said fiancee was taking a nap on her chest.

 

The laugh did wake Hurley up, who groaned and glared at Sloane with as much irritation as she could muster half-asleep.

 

“Sorry, Hurls,” Sloane said, still grinning. “I had a funny thought.”

 

“Mhm. Well, it woke me up, so it better have been --” Hurley’s eyes adjusted and took in the book Sloane was holding. “O-oh. You started reading it?”

 

“...yeah,” Sloane said, sliding a feather tucked behind her head into place as a bookmark and setting the book aside. “I… wanted to read the whole story.”

 

Hurley’s tired hesitance lit up like a Candlenights bush into joy. “Read some?”

 

“What?”

 

“Read your favorite one so far. I-I want to hear how they sound when you read them. Uh, please?”

 

Sloane threw an arm over her eyes to shield herself from the power of Hurley’s puppy eyes, but their power reached her anyway… and, really, it wasn’t that bad of an idea. “O-kay,” she said, faking a sigh of defeat to make Hurley laugh. She grabbed and re-opened the book, saying, “So I’ve only gotten to their second meeting face-to-face, I think?”

 

“There are some really good ones in the beginning,” Hurley said. She shifted to be sitting up next to Sloane, leaning against the headboard before she continued. “Including the, uh…” her eyes flickered to a dense collection of raven-feather bookmarks. “A lot of the ones that remind me of you.”

 

“That’s gay, Hurley.”

 

“Says the woman about to read her fiancee a gay love story.”

 

“ _Pieces_ of a gay love story.”

 

Hurley laughed, giving Sloane a playful punch on the arm. “Same thing.”

 

Sloane rolled her eyes and opened the book, holding it above her head and flipping through the pages. There was one she had in mind, one that wasn’t marked with a raven feather bookmark but that reminded Sloane of Hurley. She’d figured out that poems marked with “I” were written by one woman, and “II” written by her (eventual) wife. Many of the poems Hurley had likened to Sloane were labeled “II,” who was often called with raven feathers and the subtler parts of their budding relationship; in perfect harmony several poems Sloane had thought about marking were from “I,” who she’d come to realize was the louder, more overt and grand-gesture-type of the two. Sloane was less and less sure this book wasn’t written about them by some gay prophet as she flipped through the pages.

 

She landed on the page, hiding it from Hurley, who probably knew the poems by heart by now. Sloane cleared her throat and read aloud, slipping into the way she sang lullabies.

 

“ _II_

_I sit and watch the horizon,_

_Waiting for some sort of news_

_Some sort of sign_

_That still she pursues me._

_That still she wants to pursue me._

_That still she wants to finish this secret courtship._

_That still she wants to confess to the world._

 

_I sit and watch and wait._

_I feel in my heart_

_Her voice_

_Calling after me._

_I feel in my heart_

_Her touch_

_Tight and soft all the same._

 

_I stir and look and listen._

_I hear in the air_

_Her voice_

_Calling to me._

_I hear in the air_

_Her footsteps_

_Running toward me._

 

_I look up._

_I stand._

_I run._ ”

 

Silence hung in the air; Sloane was afraid she’d fucked it up, somehow, because  _obviously_ she’d be the one to fuck up reading a poem, but then a single tear fell on her cheek and she looked up to see Hurley grinning, wiping straggler tears from her face. “Sorry, sorry,” Hurley said, waving off Sloane’s concern. “I just. It’s been so long since I got to hear you sing. Shit, that was beautiful.”

 

Sloane let the book rest on her stomach and put a hand on the back of Hurley’s head to bend her down and kiss her. “Dork,” she teased, leaving her hand on Hurley’s cheek. “Do you want me to read another one?”

 

Hurley leaned into her touch, nodding. “Could you read _my_ favorite?”

 

“‘S long as there’re no spoilers for the ending.”

 

“You know how it ends! Don’t give me that.”

 

Sloane laughed, still grinning with her hand on Hurley’s cheek as Hurley took the book from her and flipped through it. Hurley combed the pages with the slightest furrow of concentration between her eyebrows, eyes darting between pages and lines. She didn’t make any move to shake Sloane’s hand; Sloane moved it when her back straightened and she moved to turn the book around for Sloane to take. “This one?” Sloane asked, pointing at a page with no number on it.

 

Hurley’s cheeks turned pink, the color creeping up to her ears. “Mhm.”

 

Sloane held the book aloft, scanning the page to get a general idea of the words. Aw, this was cute. She chuckled and took a deep breath, singing the poem just as before.

 

“ _Together we sit_

_On the edge of the cliff_

_Where once we each sat alone._

_The waves are quiet;_

_The earth holds its breath;_

_There is something here that understands our calm._

_We turn to each other,_

_Kiss short and sweet._

_The rings can wait another year,_

_But tonight, we are one._ ”

 

The poem wasn’t quite at the end of the book, but Sloane felt a sense of finality when her voice instinctively dipped into a whisper for the last line. A special sort of silence settled over the two of them, the book still held aloft in Sloane’s hands and the only sound the thumping of their hearts in their chest.

 

“It’s. It’s my favorite,” Hurley whispered after a few moments. “Um. Because.”

 

Sloane closed and rested the book on her chest again before meeting Hurley’s eyes. “I get it,” she said, matching her volume. There was a heartbeat of silent understanding. Hurley slid down to lie on her side next to Sloane, resting her head on Sloane’s shoulder and interlocking their fingers. Sloane nuzzled Hurley’s forehead and shifted to lie on her stomach, setting the book down in front of them.

 

“Do… you want to read it with me?” Sloane asked. “We can take turns.”

 

“...yeah, I think that’d be alright.”

 

Hurley flipped over and rested her head on her folded arms; Sloane put her arm around Hurley’s shoulder and turned the pages back to where she left off. Sloane took a moment to figure out which poem she hadn’t read yet, and then said, “You should read one’s parts.”

 

Hurley smiled. “I was going to say you should read two’s.”

 

Sloane laughed. A silent tension broke and settled the two into a peaceful coexistence; the world let out its breath. They were here, together, bound by something intangible and soft. This moment of intimacy, this moment of touching souls and sharing something vital wrapped in a shroud, had ended in a connection unknowingly, unspokenly, deeper than before. And it was perfect because they hardly even noticed.

 

They had nowhere to be, and dinner was still a couple hours away, so they sat down with the book and read back and forth. Hurley’s voice bubbled with the fondness for the text and fiancee she was sharing it with; Sloane’s slipped from her in a song she hadn’t needed in years, with highs and lows so perfect that she wondered again if this was just  _about_ them. They were active, lively, putting on a performance for each other; a performance which included a brief intermission halfway through the book for kisses and a chase around the apartment when Hurley stole Sloane’s hairpins and sent her long hair tumbling down into her face because “you’ll look the part!”

 

The chase ended with Sloane catching Hurley, swooping her into her arms and spinning them around with unbridled glee and laughter. They collapsed on the couch, breathless. The sun had almost started to go down, sinking from its late afternoon zenith to an early evening not-quite-sunset. Sloane took her hairpins and put herself back together while they sat, Hurley in her lap -- who, of course, stole a piece of her hair before Sloane put it up and started to braid it.

 

“I love the book,” Sloane said, breaking the pause. “I can see… well, why you do too.”

 

Hurley hummed, smiling. She was still working on the braid, so Sloane tried to keep her head still. She thought her hair was too gross to be worth braiding up, but she wasn’t about to disrupt Hurley’s work; it was something she loved to do, and she’d told Sloane that her hair was her favorite to dress up on multiple occasions. Hurley tied off the braid with a tie she found scrounging around in the couch and let it fall against her chest, leaning back to look at Sloane. “It’s such a weird coincidence,” she said. “Just like, all of it. And you and me.”

 

“So it’s _not_ just me?”

 

Hurley shook her head, smiling. “Nah. I think… I think that’s part of why I pulled it off the shelf again. When you started writing me letters, something in me just… felt like it was important. And when I imagined what you’d be like, when we met face to face. I started making the copies of the feathers and putting them in the pages.”

 

Sloane’s eyes went wide. “You did all that _before_ we met?”

 

“Mhm. Like I said, I just felt like it was _important_ that I reread it.”

 

“Hurley.” Sloane took a deep breath as if preparing to say something important. Instead, her face broke out into a shit-eating grin. “That’s _gay_.”

 

Both of them held a breath, daring the other to speak first, and then broke down laughing; Hurley was doubled over and nearly fell off the couch as she was dislodged from Sloane’s arms, who’d moved them to cover her mouth.

 

“Sloane, I love you,” she managed, flopping back against Sloane to take her face in her hands. “But you have _got_ to get a new joke.”

 

“Not until you stop laughing at it.”

 

Hurley tried for a few moments to counter, but then she gave up and let her arms fall, still chuckling. “You got me there.”

 

Sloane took Hurley’s hands in her own, resting her chin on the top of Hurley’s hair and closing her eyes. Reading had taken more out of her than she thought, apparently; laying in the sun coming in through the window like this made her just want to take a nap with Hurley. That was technically what they’d been doing earlier, but Sloane had been too restless to get to sleep -- which was the whole reason she’d started reading in the first place (she told herself). Hurley didn’t look tired, but she was also the kind of person who insisted she wasn’t sleepy until she was passed out on the floor and had to be carried to bed.

 

“Hmm, we should take a nap,” Sloane suggested, wrapping their intertwined arms around Hurley. “I’m tired.”

 

“And what were you doing earlier?” Hurley teased despite her movement to settle deeper into Sloane’s lap.

 

“Goofing off because I love you and wanted to read your book.”

 

Hurley chuckled. “How about we do the gardening we were supposed to do and then you can just go to bed at a reasonable hour?”

 

Sloane stuck her lip out and pretend-whined. “But Hurls, that takes _energy_.”

 

A moment of thought. “I know,” she said, disconnecting their arms to flip over and face Sloane. “I’ll do the gardening part, and _you_ keep reading poems.”

 

Sloane rested her forehead on Hurley’s, eyes glittering with both a sense of mischief and the sleepy adoring sparkle that always seemed to pop up in the evening when they cuddled and worked on the garden they hid behind the apartment building. “You know just what a girl needs, don’t you?” she hummed.

 

Hurley stole a kiss instead of answering and hopped off the couch, rolling to her feet on the other side of the coffee table. She stuck a hand out to Sloane, who pulled herself up and stretched. “I’ll meet you outside,” Hurley said, squeezing Sloane’s hand before heading over to and hopping out of the window that led down to the garden.

 

Once she was sure Hurley was safely on the ground, Sloane stood and stretched. She’d probably end up dozing off outside -- in the evening Goldcliff was warm enough to sleep outside comfortably -- but as long as they were together it would be okay. She wrapped the book in a blanket and threw it over her shoulder to safely scale the rope down to the backyard. Hurley was already working, t-shirt discarded and pants rolled up to leave her in a bra and makeshift shorts, squatting in the vegetable plot to scour for pests and dead plants. Sloane unrolled her improvised bag and lounged on the blanket with the book in her lap, waiting for Hurley to notice her before opening and starting to read more aloud.

 

They spent the evening just like that; Hurley weeding and watering their active beds and preparing the empty ones for the next growing season, Sloane reading poems and occasionally holding tools or stacking vegetables in a basket for dinner. When Hurley stopped to rest for a while, she read some of her favorites as Sloane came across them or certain sections in their back-and-forth style at Sloane’s request. Hurley’s stomach rumbled a bit, sitting next to a pile of vegetables and thinking about the meat she’d gotten on her way home today sitting in their icebox, but she pushed through it; she wasn’t that hungry, it was just starting to get late and their normal dinner time was approaching. She waited until when, mid-poem, Sloane started to nod off, her eyelids drooping. Once she felt Sloane’s head rest on hers, Hurley stood up and moved the book so she could try and tug Sloane to her feet.

 

“It’s dinnertime, Sloane,” Hurley said, almost tumbling backward once Sloane actually began to stand. “No sleeping yet.”

 

Sloane rubbed her eyes, protesting, “I was  _not_ sleeping,” as she gathered up the book and basket of food. “What’re we having tonight, babe?”

 

Hurley shrugged, tying her shirt around her waist to scale back up the building. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

 

They regrouped in the kitchen, the book still tucked under Sloane’s arm. Hurley just grinned at her when she saw it, starting the prep while Sloane sat at the counter and flipped through the pages, looking for something specific.

 

“One last read before we eat?” Sloane suggested.

 

“Mhm,” Hurley hummed.

 

Sloane cleared her throat. She’d picked this one while Hurley was gardening, remembering it from her silent reading.

 

“ _II_

_Today we met,_

_Really met,_

_Face to face_

_For the first time._

_I knew it before today,_

_But it is all so new again:_

_She is radiant,_

_Like the flowers and crops_

_In the summertime._

_Our time was brief,_

_I’d hardly call it a conversation._

_But to hear her up close_

_Was enough._ ”

 

Hurley’s hands had paused, a half-peeled potato in her hand. Even from behind Sloane could see the red creeping up her ears and neck. “Do you know the one right after that?” Hurley asked, resuming her work.

 

Sloane shut the book, sliding it across the counter and leaning on her hands. “Not anymore.”

 

A deep breath and Hurley recited the next poem.

 

“ _I_

_Today I saw her,_

_Up close, smiling, free,_

_For the first time._

_The ocean breeze played with her hair_

_The way I crave to._

_Her hands in mine feel_

_Exactly how I’d hoped:_

_Perfect, snug, balanced._

_It wasn’t long,_

_But it was just long enough._ ”

 

Sloane rounded the counter without a word, kissing Hurley on the side of the head. She took the meat out of their icebox, set it on the counter, and together they settled into making dinner.

 

Dinner was cooked and eaten, some time spent on the couch, and the bed made and filled by the time the sun had dipped below the horizon and the air cooled to what counted as evening chill in a hot desert. They fell asleep with the book propped on the bed, feather bookmark threatening to fall out, curled into each other.

 

(Somewhere, sometime, someone smiled. Perfect.)

**Author's Note:**

> eyy thanks for reading all the way to the end!! i hope you enjoyed and i'd love to hear from you <3  
> in the comments or on [my tumblr](http://thegempage.tumblr.com/) or [my twitter](https://twitter.com/achillopal)  
> i love amnesty but sometimes i just miss balance, you know? esp these lovely ladies. tho i do have two amnesty projects in the works : oo  
> (tumblr post link to come!)


End file.
